akihabaranews have carried news of Tosh announcing they've thrown in the towel.

so, with a clear winner for HD, are there any here who, like me, have sat on the fence waiting for a winner. and might go ahead with a hidef TV and a BRay player (PS/3 for me, probably)

how does this bode for being able to rip movies and encode them for playing on our beloved devices, with DVD it's now pretty trivial, with BR it's not so?

I'm a console geek (well indeed I'm a true geek ) and I am a PS/2 lover so I rose to buy PS3 when it came out and I must say I'm deceipt, wonderful graphics and wonderful HD but... it's dirty, hot and NOISY making it a not so good thing for a living room, it would have been the perfect thing for a living room, it supports UPNP, browser, divx (since no long ago), mp3, wma, atrac, BR... but I personally can't stand seeing a movie with a background noisy fan running not to say PS3 must be into a glass or it starts taking all dust from the neighbourhood.

On the gaming side... i had no faith on wii... but it has won the fight, atm I'm only using PS3 for music streaming from a FSG-3 and PS/2 gaming (all ps2 moved to bedroom when ps3 arrived). If I could go back in time I'd buy a BR player and a upnp one and would be happier and quieter .

I would have liked it better if somehow both sides "lost" that'll teach all the participants not to have these format wars where the only loser is the consumer.

well, in a sense everyone lost, tosh subsidised hddvd, microsoft/xbox is stuck with a dead-end hddvd device (I wonder if they will continue the discounting or return to full price knowing they can't recover the market?), sony and co. have spent megabucks on promotions (who knows whose palms they had to grease to get the studios to buy in?)... but of course the consumer has paid for it all indirectly.

--edit-- p.s. if a hi-def WII came out tomorrow, I'd forget about buying a PS/3.